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Review: The Rest of Us Just Live Here

The Rest of Us Just Live Here The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Instead of focusing on what all of the "chosen ones" are up to--saving the world and whatnot--this book is about what the regular people of a little town are up to in the meanwhile.

What this book needed to do in order to be successful was give us a contemporary story in the foreground, showcasing normal people and their normal problems, while also making sure to prominently include the effects of the goings on of the chosen ones (hereby referred to as "the indie kids") happening in the background. We needed to see impact on our main characters' otherwise completely normal lives directly caused by those antics, but the contemporary story itself also needed to be compelling enough to keep the reader interested on its own. (view spoiler)

As you can see, there was a lot that this book needed to do correctly in order to actually work, so I was quite worried that the whole premise would end up just being a gimmick to get people to read a regular contemporary story. In the beginning I thought that that was actually what was happening. The title of each chapter acts as a short summary of what the indie kids are up to, and then every chapter is back to the contemporary story. In the beginning that was all there was, and it felt very disappointing. But luckily it then picked up.

What initially felt like being cucked ended up being really riveting. The foreground and background stories started to mingle, and having the background elements kept to being only exactly that--in the background--made each new tickle of information extremely gripping. This is definitely not just a regular contemporary story.

I was pretty surprised to see that this book deals with some pretty serious subjects like OCD and anorexia, so while the indie kids were fighting external demons, the main cast had their own internal demons to deal with. This is right in line with the parameters I set up prior to reading, and it was really insightful, eye opening, and educational to see the intimate struggles of someone suffering with OCD, and it made me appreciate and understand the disorder more.

4 stars because it was well executed, but in the end it didn't have that final push to completely and utterly blow me away.

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